In 1996 I was a green, young political correspondent making my first visit to SNP HQ. The party’s cramped base was appropriate to its status at the time: it sat above a slightly desperate-looking pawn shop in central Edinburgh, was quite hard to find, and was shabby in a way that spoke to minimal resources and limited prestige.
The Nats were little more than an electoral afterthought: they had a grand total of three Scottish MPs to Labour’s 49, the Conservatives’ 11 and the Liberal Democrats’ nine. Alex Salmond was midway through his first tenure as leader and was still sculpting a rebellious rabble that blew left or right – depending on who was speaking and to whom – into a more alluring shape: as business-friendly, pro-European social democrats who sought to align more closely with the preferences of most Scottish voters.
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